Archive for the 'Bill Fay' Category

One of Bill Fay’s favorite lyrical tricks begins with him describing a pastoral scene. In “Underneath the Sun,” the fourth track on his fourth record, he follows along as “Rain falls down and waters the ground/Where the cherry tree is forming buds/For the blossoms to come.” Fay sings with great delicacy; his voice traces the […]

Singer-songwriter Bill Fay has enjoyed a long and legendary career in obscurity. The British musician first raised eyebrows among listeners back in 1970 with his startlingly unique, baroque debut record Bill Fay, which despite a poor commercial impact quickly became a cult classic and garnered comparisons to other unusual and uncelebrated songwriters, such as Nick […]

Bill Fay is a name that has crept back into the underground consciousness in recent years due to some unexpected word-of-mouth publicity culminating in a series of commendable reissues of the artist’s work. Going into Time of the Last Persecution, however, I was unaware of such recent windfalls. Initially I was a bit uncertain as […]